Vladimir Putin laments Soviet Union ignoring his spy intelligence

Vladimir Putin has admitted for the first time that he spent his stint as a KGB spy in 1980s East Germany conducting industrial espionage against the West, lamenting that the secrets he stole were ignored.

n his most candid comments on the subject to date, the Russian prime minister said that at least part of his job as a KGB agent in East Germany involved acquiring sensitive technological and industrial secrets from the West.

But he told a meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences that he grew increasingly frustrated as the know-how he passed back to the Soviet Union to help it make good the yawning technological gap with the West went unused.

Mr Putin, who worked as a KGB spy in Dresden from 1985-1990, said he could not understand why Soviet scientists did not use the intelligence he and his colleagues were "acquiring" from the West.